1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, and more particularly, to a system in which printing can be efficiently performed by only specifying a printer to be used, from placed printers, by a user at the time of the printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in order to use a peripheral device such as a printer from a host computer, generally, a particular device driver which is compatible with the peripheral device needs to be incorporated in the host computer. A user or an administrator has been forced to perform installation work for previously checking information on an IP address or the like required for incorporating the device driver before printing, finding a compatible device driver from the Internet, and placing the device driver.
Consequently, in recent years, “universal driver” (generic printer driver), which is a common device driver that can be used regardless of a type of the peripheral device, has been researched and developed. For example, HP Universal Print Driver Series for Windows-overview and features (http://h20338.www2.hp.com/hpsub/cache/342988-0-0-225-121.html) discloses a method of issuing a printing instruction from an application to the generic printer driver, subsequently selecting a network printer that can perform output, and perform printing. According to this method, all printers which the generic printer driver is compatible with can be used by only previously incorporating the generic printer driver in an information processing apparatus.
However, since the generic printer driver shown in the above described article generates and transmits a command which can be processed by using common functions included in all the compatible printers, functions are limited in comparison with a case where the printing is performed by using a dedicated printer driver which is specialized in each printer. Moreover, basically, the printing cannot be performed for a printer of a type which cannot process a format of the command transmitted by the generic printer driver.
When the user performs the printing for the printer, the user issues the printing instruction from the application, selects a desired printer from a printer list displayed on a screen, and designates printing settings or the like. Here, the printer list displayed on the screen is displayed corresponding to a printer driver which has been installed and for which a print queue has been created.
For the user, depending on a document to be printed or the like, it is desirable to perform the printing depending on occasions, such as in a case where the generic printer driver as described above is used to simply perform the printing, and in a case where a dedicated printer is used to perform the printing. Therefore, in a host computer used by the user, such a situation can occur in which many types of drivers are installed and mixed. Furthermore, there is also an environment in which many types of printer drivers can be installed in the host computer by plug-and-play or the like without the user's intent.
In this way, in the environment in which many types of drivers are installed, it is cumbersome for the user to select the desired printer from the printer list displayed on the screen, after the user has issued the printing instruction from the application. Particularly, as described above, there are also printer drivers, such as the generic printer driver and the dedicated printer driver, which transmit a print job to the same printer but are different in functions. Thus, it is very difficult for the user to select a printer for performing the printing while taking full advantage of the functions included in the printer.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a method of managing device drivers so that the selection of the printer at the time of the printing may not be cumbersome, in such an environment in which many types of device drivers are installed in the host computer without the user's intent.